Born in
Manhattan and raised in Los Angeles, Stephanie
grew up swimming, riding, playing tennis,
dancing, diving, clowning around, doing
chores, and living the normal life of a tomboy
in the great expanse of the San Fernando
Valley. As a very young amateur theatrical
entrepreneur, she produced, wrote, and
directed pieces in her little bedroom hallway,
in the stable, and on neighbors' fireplace
hearths, earning her the title, "the boss."
But Stephanie's abiding love of theater was
kindled at Brown Ledge Camp in Mallett's Bay,
Vermont, where she acted, sang, and was
nurtured in theater craft for six summers.
Friends she made there count among her friends
today.
Eager to
get on with it, she created her own
independent project in her senior year at
Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia: she
returned to Los Angeles to study acting,
movement, voice, tap and ballet. After
graduating cum laude from high school,
Stephanie's ambitions led her to choose a
professional drama school over university, and
she spent a challenging time in New York
"getting a dose of it."
Returning to Los Angeles once again, she
worked for her brother and sister-in-law's
company, Correia Art Glass, while she made the
audition rounds. In time she gave up packing
glass to star in television movies, among them
the Emmy Award-winning
The Gathering,
Centennial, The Golden Moment, and
Tomorrow's
Child, along with the occasional guest series
role. After several such projects and two
feature films -
The Magic of Lassie with James
Stewart and
The Awakening with Charlton Heston
- Stephanie was offered the role of Laura Holt
in the MTM series,
Remington Steele,
which she played for five years with Pierce
Brosnan and Doris Roberts on NBC. She appeared
as
Caroline?
for Hallmark on CBS, which won three Emmys and
earned her a Golden Globe nomination.
Subsequently,
Stephanie starred in
The Story Lady with
Jessica Tandy,
Incident in a Small Town for
CBS with Walter Matthau and Harry Morgan, and
Stop The World - I Want To Get Off, the
musical, on A&E, to name a few of her more
than thirty television movie appearances.
Stephanie starred in Lifetime Television's
50th movie, Prison of Secrets, followed by an
episode of Touched By An Angel, their
highest-rated show to that date. She was happy
to be back in the saddle, in Ventura and Ojai,
no less, filming an independent movie with
Dennis Hopper called
The Prophet's Game,
followed by Borderline Normal in Saskatchewan,
Malpractice in New Orleans, and another
Touched By An Angel. More recently she spent a
happy time guesting on
Crossing Jordan.
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After debuting on
stage in the musical
Festival in 1979 at the
Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles with Gregory
Harrison and Brian Stokes Mitchell, Stephanie
appeared as Miranda in
The Tempest with
Anthony Hopkins and Brent Carver at the Mark
Taper Forum. Other theater includes
The Cherry
Orchard at the Long Wharf Theater,
Summer and
Smoke and
Barbarians at the Williamstown
Theatre Festival, and the national tour of
My
One And Only with Tommy Tune. In 1989 she
initiated a play to be written for her and
Linda Purl, and directed by Jenny Sullivan -
The Baby Dance by Jane Anderson - which they
produced and starred in at the Pasadena
Playhouse. The production moved to
Williamstown and Long Wharf, and culminated in
a critically acclaimed run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. She played
Polly Peacham in
The Threepenny Opera with
Betty Buckley at Williamstown, and had a
wonderful time with `Tracy Lord' in
The
Philadelphia Story at the Cleveland PlayHouse.
In 1994 Stephanie took on the double roles of
an Irish peasant and a New Bedford fisherman's
wife in the original production of
The Crimson
Thread in Connecticut (which she co-produced),
and the Pasadena Playhouse. A second tread on
the L.A. boards under Jenny Sullivan's
direction was the hilarious, tour-de-force
turn as a nail-spitting media barracuda in the
West Coast premiere of
AdWars with the
wonderful David Dukes (R.I.P.).
At L.A.'s
Coronet Theater for many months, Stephanie
kicked up a lotta sand as the loveable dog in
A.R.Gurney's
Sylvia. In 1998 she starred in
the world premiere of Jane Martin's
Mr. Bundy
at the Humana Festival of Actors Theatre of
Louisville, and happily played opposite Lucie Arnaz in
Wonderful Town for the Reprise!
series in L.A. Stephanie was thrilled to be
reunited with her dear
Baby Dance friends John
Bennett Perry and Jenny Sullivan for the
Rubicon Theatre's award-winning, double run of
The Rainmaker. A dream came true, tackling the
towering role of Terry in Warren Leight's
knockout
Side Man at the Guthrie Theater in
Minneapolis, followed by a tour of
Accomplice
on the east coast (after a month's holiday in
London, St. Petersberg, Moscow, Rostov
[birthplace of her grandfather, Efrem],
Istanbul, Athens, and sailing the Dodecanes!).
For
several springs now, Stephanie has opened the
Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary
Festival with a reading of one of his plays at
their Gala event - she's happily shared those
boards with Alec Baldwin, Elizabeth Ashley,
John Goodman, Patricia Neal, Linda Hart, and
the charming Rex Reed. Having worked in New
Orleans with the Festival and in
Malpractice
and made friends in Nola, the recent tragedies
there hit especially hard.
Stephanie had another dream come true, to play
'Varya' in
The Cherry Orchard, with the added
thrill of playing opposite one of her acting
heroes, the amazing and delightful Alfred
Molina. Recently she played Ursula in Nicholas
Wright's wonderful play
Vincent in Brixton at
the Pasadena Playhouse. Also at the Rubicon
Theatre she's played in Brian Friel's
Dancing
at Lughnasa,
Jane Anderson's
Defying Gravity,
and trod the boards with her father Efrem for
the first time, in Tennessee Williams'
The Night of the Iguana.
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